Thursday, November 3, 2016

What a Game!

They did it!

If truth be told, I'm not really a hard core sports person.
I have "my teams," the Giants and the 49ers -- you can't live around this
family and not -- but I don't "follow" sports as religiously as, say, Tom
and my brother-in-law do.

I'm the kind of person who watches the last inning or
quarter of a game when my team is winning. I like to see the exciting
finale.

I have not watched any games of this year's World Series,
but I even though I never cared about the Cubs before in my life (and Ernie
Banks, in his day, was the bane of my existence), I couldn't help rooting
for the team whose last chance at the big prize was 108 years ago.

My "rooting" for the Cubs this year did not extend to
actually watching a single game, though I did, at some point in the evening,
check the score for that day's game. While I was thrilled when the
Cubs won the first game, my heart sank when they were down 1 game to three
and it seemed the Indians were going to take it all, but rejoiced again when
they picked up the net two games to tie the series. Even at that, with
this being the finale game, win or lose, I didn't turn on the game until
Walt started coming downstairs to tell me what was going on. By the
time the score was tied and the rain started, I had to stop cooking, turn
off what was already on TV , and turn on the game.

I don't think there is a single person, Cubs fan or Indians
fan, who would say this was a boring game! It had just about every
exciting thing you could hope for, including a 15 minute rain delay in the
10th inning, and when the Cubs made that last out to win the series and the
entire team burst onto the field, I had tears streaming down my face.
I'd never paid attention to the Cubs before, but my heart was so full to
know that finally they had won a World Series.

Congratulations, guys...you definitely done good!

Having confessed my relationship with sports, I must make
another true confession.

Alice Nan and Joe have this cookie jar that they have had
for years. I think someone (it might even have been someone in this
family) gave it to her long before they were married.

The thing that makes it unique, in addition to the fact that
you rarely see cookie jars that look like policemen, is that when you tip
the head back to get a cookie, it commands in a loud, obnoxious voice "Stop!
Move away from the cookie jar!'

I guess it's a great thing to have if you are serious about
watching your weight, but there is absolutely NO sneaking any cookies with
this guy around. The whole house knows you are checking the cookie
jar. whether you take a cookie or not.

When I was at Alice's this week, all by myself, she had left
a note about various things in the house I might want to eat, including a
note that the cookie jar had Girl Scouts lemon cookies in it. I'm not
really a big fan of lemon cookies and I hate the sound of that damn
policeman, so I never looked in the jar to get a cookie.

But it was sitting on the counter next to the coffee pot,
which was right by the electrical outlet. When it came time to
recharge my cell phone, I reached between the coffee pot and the cookie jar
to plug in my electrical cord and in so doing, I knocked the head of the
cookie jar and it fell open. "Stop!" cried the police man, for what
would be the last time.

Somehow in knocking the head over, I had somehow damaged the
mechanism and silenced him.

I anguished over that all week. To tell Alice or not
to tell her and let her think it had finally worn itself out. In the
end, I did the honorable thing and as I was leaving the house, I turned,
like Colombo, for "one last thing" and confessed to her that I had broken
the cookie jar and that it no longer had a voice.

I went to show her what I'd done, showed her how I'd
gone to
plug in my electronics and then said that I had knocked the head back.
In explaining it, I opened the voiceless cookie jar and it aid "Stop!
Move
away from the cookie jar!" So I hadn't broken it after all and leaving
it alone for 2 days (and not trying any of the lemon cookies) had
somehow "fixed" whatever I did to it.

I was very relieved.

I went to Atria in the morning to have lunch with my mother.
She was pleased to see me and even seemed to realize that I hadn't been
around in several days, though she didn't remember visits by Alice Nan and
Joe, Ned, or Walt. But we had a nice visit and I went with her to
lunch.

Her laundry basket was overflowing and she had been folding
up dirty clothes and putting them in the bag that I use to carry her dirties
home with me to wash.

The bag was piled high when I left and I could see that she
was out of underwear, so I will go over again in the morning and take her
all clean clothes which will last her another week. Now that she is
getting assistance with dressing, the aids or choosing clothes in her closet
that she has not worn in years, and the clothes she takes off are actually
getting put in the hamper when they are dirty, which is a refreshing
novelty.

For once I had lots to tell her when she asked "what have
you been doing that's exciting?" I told her about my trip and told her
cute things the girls had done, and what they had done for Halloween, about
their costumes, about how cute it was watching both girls helping both Tom
and Laurel cooking dinner, and how tired I had been on the drive home and
when I finished she asked "so are you going dancing tonight?"